


Be Still

by thelightninginme



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Dragon Age: Inquisition Spoilers, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of Rite of Tranquility, Past Violence, Slightly Canon-Divergent, Snarky Hawke, hawke's seen some shit, mentions of slavers/slavery, varric/hawke friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-11
Updated: 2015-04-17
Packaged: 2018-03-22 09:57:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3724597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelightninginme/pseuds/thelightninginme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Spoilers for Inquisition, particularly 'Here Lies the Abyss'.) Hawke has made her choices, and now she must live with them. She would have run all the way to Weisshaupt, until a run-in with a group of slavers forces her to slow down - the one thing she can't do. </p><p>Varric and Fenris catch up eventually.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

Varric ought to be used this by now, these vigils over Hawke’s bedside, and he says as much to the Inquisitor when she tiptoes into the room and asks her feet if he needs anything. What Varric needs is for Hawke to not be in a stupid bullshit Fade coma, but he doesn’t say this. He doesn’t need to wring anymore angst over Hawke’s fate out of Lavellan. Besides, he owes her for coming to him first. They were still in Val Royeaux, mopping up the rest of Celene’s mess, the Inquisitor still the talk of the empire, when the report came in. A skirmish, off the Imperial Highway near the Nevarran border, between Inquisition soldiers and a handful of slavers. Among their captives was an injured and sick woman. “Our people spoke with the other captives. Apparently, they said it was Hawke,” Lavellan says quietly. “It’s possible they were mistaken. But if you want me personally involved on this…”

The location fits, given the direction Hawke was heading in when he saw her last. (“Weisshaupt is _way the hell north_ ,” he tells her, as if she doesn’t already know.) And it’s just like her, to get involved in something like that just because it’s the right thing to do. But it’s that “injured” and “sick” that really gets at him. Because if it is Hawke, he can’t just leave her to die surrounded by Inquisition soldiers in the ass-end of Orlais.

Lavellan chooses Solas to go with them, and Cassandra invites herself, driven by guilt, probably, which they all suspect but don’t acknowledge. They would probably be good friends, Cassandra and Hawke, the whole Kirkwall thing aside, considering how they both need to take responsibility for every damn thing that goes wrong in Thedas.

They make good time, coming from Val Royeaux instead of all the way from Skyhold. Varric is expecting a cluster of tents like usual, but the Inquisition soldiers in this part of the world have managed to dig into a small crossroads village. Apparently word that they were coming arrived only shortly before they did, because there is some scrambling and confusion before the commander of the camp can be located. He looks up from the report in his hand and gives them a knowing grimace that makes Varric very nervous indeed. “Your friend saved us a lot of trouble tracking those two down. Notorious pair of slavers, see, they’ve been at it long before all this fighting made it easy to get away with. They normally wouldn’t have stayed in one place for so long, but it sounds like they couldn’t decide what to do with your friend. Anyway, I’ll fetch the healer,” he says. “He can explain it better than I can.”

The healer is a former circle mage, and he leads them to the inn that the Inquisition has requisitioned for the time being. “Well, the bastards roughed her up pretty well. She’s barely been conscious since we found her,” he says, “and she clearly didn’t understand when we asked her who she was or where she came from. She’s neither here nor there.”

Before Varric can ask what the hell that’s supposed to mean, the healer pushes open the door to one of the inn’s rooms and there is Hawke lying on a cot, asleep, her breathing quick and shallow. Varric takes half a step towards her and recoils in horror; faint but unmistakable is the sunburst brand on her forehead.

Somewhere behind him, Lavellan inhales sharply, and Cassandra’s hand comes down hard on his shoulder. It takes Varric a moment to realize the healer is speaking, and when he does, the man sounds like he’s underwater.

“It didn’t work,” he’s saying, hands raised and palms out in a gesture of assurance. “It didn’t take. Stay for yourself a few days and you’ll see. The mark fades a little more every day.”

The room is dead silent. “Then she isn’t Tranquil?” Cassandra asks finally, her grip on his shoulder almost uncomfortably tight.

“No,” the healer answers, the most beautiful word in the world. “Either the slavers did it wrong, or she’s too powerful of a mage, or maybe both.”

“I thought you said she hasn’t been conscious,” Lavellan says, “so how can you be sure it didn’t work?”

The healer grimaces. “Because a Tranquil wouldn’t have nightmares like hers.”

Another long, uncomfortable silence. “What’s wrong with her then, that she won’t wake up?” Lavellan asks.

The healer shrugs. “Just because they failed in actually turning her Tranquil doesn’t mean they didn’t do some damage. Eventually, I think, she’ll come round, but her mind’s got to sort itself out first.”

“Her mind is trapped in the Fade, you mean,” Solas speaks up from the back of the room.

The healer nods, frowning at Hawke. “Never saw such a thing for myself, but I think so, yes.”

So then what are they supposed to _do_? How do they fix this? What has this man done for Hawke besides sit on his ass and _theorize_? But before Varric can ask the man excuses himself with other duties, other patients to attend to. Doesn’t he know that’s _Hawke_?

“Have you ever heard of such a thing, Cassandra?” Lavellan is saying, once the man is out of earshot. “The Rite of Tranquility just…not working?”

Cassandra hasn’t, but Solas is eyeing Hawke with an expression Varric usually sees reserved for the weird Fade-books that Solas gets special-ordered from Leliana. “It’s obvious, isn’t it?” he says, which Varric finds absolutely insufferable. “What is Tranquility except the severance between a mage and the Fade? But it isn’t so difficult to imagine that a mage who has physically entered the Fade cannot be made Tranquil. The Champion would have left a mark on the Fade, just as it will have left its mark on her.”

If Hawke’s mind is trapped in the Fade, that’s like what happened to Feynriel, and that was remedied easily enough. Well. ‘Easily’ being a relative term. “You could go in there, couldn’t you, Chuckles. Find her and bring her back.”

Solas’s expression softens and he ceases to look at Hawke as though she is a particularly interesting experiment. “I could, should such drastic measures prove necessary. But it is as the healer said. The failed ritual has clearly done some damage. I think the Champion would be better served if we let her come out of it on her own. Talk to her, Master Tethras. She knows you and she knows your voice. Give her something in the waking world with which to orient herself.”

“Talk? He does nothing better,” Cassandra says, finally releasing her grip on his shoulder. But there is no bite to it; in fact, she sounds disturbingly _tender_.

So Varric talks. Settles in her room in that little crossroads inn and talks. Hawke has been through worse than this, after all, and Varric tells her so. For one, no one seems to have run her through with a comically oversized javelin this time. Yes, _that_ was a fun night, everything smelling of blood and smoke, keeping vigil in Hawke’s room, Anders working on her until he looked almost as bad as she did. Aveline stood guard outside, too angry to do anything but snarl at any curious passers-by - Isabela was long gone, though not far. (Varric found her the next day at the Hanged Man. “Thought I’d get started early either way,” she slurred. “Whether she lived or not.”) Fenris paced all over the mansion, apparently in self-flagellation for suggesting the duel in the first place, but all he ultimately managed to do was annoy the shit out of the rest of them -

Fenris. _Shit_.

He considers running off right then and there to find paper and a quill, but Varric realizes he is making an awful lot of assumptions here - one, that Fenris even received the letter he sent after Adamant. Two, that Hawke actually wants to see the elf again. “I know you’re going to tell Fenris,” she had sighed before she left Skyhold, “even though I’m asking you to stay out of it.” Hawke had been cagey about the specifics of leaving Fenris behind, but between what she said and what she left unsaid and what the Nightmare taunted her with in the Fade, Varric has a general idea of what went down. Three, that Fenris would drop everything and rush out here were he to get such a missive from Varric. Might be better to wait, then, until Hawke is at least well enough to travel. Because Varric has every intention of dragging her back to Skyhold with him, Wardens be damned.

While he is mulling over what to do, Hawke wakes up.

But not in any kind of remotely coherent state. She sits up, abruptly, apparently unaware of her bruised and cracked ribs and regards him with wild eyes; whatever she is seeing, it isn’t Varric, and she screams, scrambling away from him and reaching for a mage’s staff that is not there. Drawn by the commotion the healer bursts in and shoves Varric roughly aside. The air grows thick and heavy with the weight of the healer’s sleeping spell, and Hawke stills before she can do herself injury - or set the room on fire. Varric steps out of the room; Hawke is clearly in capable hands and he can’t bear to see her like this anyway.

Forget staying out of it. Fenris needs to know about this.

 

* * *

 

Lavellan doesn’t say it, at least not in so many words, but the episode makes her wonder if Hawke is dangerous, susceptible to possession. Varric can’t really blame her for it, but she doesn’t _know_ Hawke like he does. Maybe she carries that darkness in her - that breaking point where any bargain sounds like a good deal - maybe the Chantry’s right and all mages do - but Hawke knows that cost better than anyone. He was there, after all, when Leandra Hawke died in a foundry choked with the smell of blood and smoke. Quentin had put her in these…these silk shoes with toes that curled upward, and Varric knows that for whatever reason he’ll never forget those stupid shoes as long as he lives. At first Hawke stays locked up in the house, but after the funeral she avoids it seemingly on pain of death. She spends a lot of time in Fenris’s place, and in spite of all of _that_ awkwardness, he doesn’t have the heart to kick her out. She goes to the Hanged Man a lot, too, drinking on Varric’s tab and passing out in Varric’s bed. Oh well, he gets his best work done at night, anyway.

Hawke doubts after that in a way that she didn’t before.

That’s really what kills him about all of this. Secretly (because she would laugh and accuse him of going soft if he ever said it aloud) he’d hoped that someday Hawke would stop trying to put the world back together, retire somewhere quiet, and have a couple of pointy-eared kids. Safe from anyone who might crucify her - and from anyone who might raise her up as their leader. Safe from Kirkwall and its demon problem and its templar problem. Because as much as it’s home, it just isn’t a good place for a mage. And he’s spent enough time around mages to know that the only thing more frightening than the possibility of demonic possession is Tranquility, to have your whole self erased.

So what does he do? He exposes her to both. And now - Varric has seen the shit that Hawke lugs around - hell, he’s picked up a few pieces himself - he’s never seen her damaged like this.

Still he talks to her, because Solas generally knows his shit, and maybe there is some part of her that can hear him. But after a few days of no sign that she can, it starts to feel hopeless. This isn’t Hawke, this ill woman could not be further from the scrappy refugee he met in Hightown a lifetime ago. Varric falls silent and rests forehead in his hands.

“Then what happened?”

It takes him a long time to realize that Hawke has spoken. “What?” he says, blankly.

“At the dinner. What happened?”

Varric looks at her and waits. She has barely moved; her eyes are still closed, but the lines around her mouth seem less drawn. Is this the healer’s doing? He had been in the room an hour or two ago, stifling her most recent nightmare. Whatever peaceful spell he’s put her under, Varric doesn’t want to break it.

“So the Comte is standing there, fidgeting by the punch bowl - and Cole materializes by his elbow. You remember Cole. He creeped you out.” Oh, and she’d almost fooled him, swaggering into Skyhold without Fenris like it’s no big deal, but that illusion shatters at Cole’s poking and prodding, knocking down whatever flimsy walls she’d constructed around herself. Hawke was rarely cross with people that weren’t actively trying to kill her, but she was cross with Cole. Actually he has no idea if she’ll remember Cole, if she remembers much of anything, so he presses forward without much of a pause. “Asks point-blank what he’s doing with a candlestick shoved down his pants. We all think, Kid’s spending too much time with Iron Bull. No, turns out the Comte’s been smuggling Josephine’s heirloom silver out of the banquet hall all night. They weren’t kidding, Hawke, when they said to beware the nice ones.”

“They’re going to love this one,” she mumbles, and her face relaxes. Eventually he realizes that “they” refers to his adoring audience and “this one” refers to a novelization of Lavellan’s (mis-)adventures.

The healer has no idea what he’s talking about, when Varric asks about the change in her demeanor. He nods approvingly and tells Varric it is the first time she’s shown any awareness of the outside world in a week. It almost makes it worse, though, that one bare thread of hope, winking in and out of view like a spider’s web, when another two days pass with nothing.

“I know you can hear me, Hawke,” he says, and then promptly groans at how cliche that sounds. “This is turning into the shitty sequel to Tale of the Champion, isn’t it? That was a once-in-a-lifetime book, by the way, you know lightning doesn’t strike twice. I was never going to write a sequel. I know, try to contain your crushing disappointment.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “But you know, Hawke, if I _were_ writing a sequel, this is the exact moment when you’d wake up. We’d laugh, we’d cry, we’d go back to Skyhold, you and Fenris would go live on a farm or something. I don’t know, whatever you Fereldans do when you settle down. And you’d never do anything like this to me ever again.” Hawke is apparently unmoved by his monologue; she lies still. The room is suddenly far too small - but when he steps out into the early morning light, the stares of the Inquisition soldiers don’t do much for his mood. It doesn’t really help, either, that Cassandra is the first one to actually come over to talk to him, her hands clasped behind her back. Varric never knows how to act around her when she’s like this. Cassandra blazing with purpose and faith and smashing Venatori in the face, that’s something he’s familiar with - Varric knows that she’s capable of great tenderness, too, but he’s so rarely on the receiving end of Cassandra’s sympathy that he finds it a little hard to deal with. Is he supposed to accept it or make fun of her for it?

“Is she no better?” she asks, but presses forward without waiting for the answer. They both know what it is, anyway. “Perhaps Cole could help Hawke.”

The thought has crossed Varric’s mind before. Cole might be able to reach Hawke in a way more meaningful than Varric sitting there running his mouth, and less traumatizing than Solas hopping into the Fade and yanking her out.

“Possibly. I have to say, Seeker, I’m actually a little surprised you’re still here,” he says, before she has a chance to speak of Skyhold’s resident spirit any further.

“Why should that be surprising? The Inquisitor wishes to remain if there is a chance she can be of help.”

“Yeah? Is she the Fade-whisperer now?”

“She is concerned about you, then.”

“Then why are you still here, Seeker? There’s nothing Hawke can possibly give you now.”

“I am still here for the same reasons that the Inquisitor remains, Varric.”

“And at this point, you’re wasting your time.” And it’s the closest he’ll get to voicing his despair, especially to Cassandra.

“Really?” She raises an eyebrow at him. “If that is…truly what you believe, that is one thing. But I don’t think your faith in Hawke is so easily spent.”

There she is again with her faith. Because if you just _believe_ hard enough, anything is possible. He almost gives her shit about it, except for the part where she’s right. He’s not ready to give up on Hawke just yet.

“Hawke is…very lucky to have you as a friend.”

Now it is Varric’s turn to look at Cassandra sideways. It is a nice sentiment, coming from her, especially considering that not too long ago she accused him of putting his friendship with Hawke over the Inquisition. Which, well, he kind of did, even if he had no idea what she was up to at the time.

“Friends don’t get their friends mixed up in this kind of shit, Seeker.”

“I know.” She turns to leave but hesitates a moment and lays her hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

He lets her have her apology for a moment and then Varric shrugs her off. “You _feeling_ all right, Seeker? Taken any hits to the head lately?”

Cassandra rolls her eyes and hums in disapproval once more before she walks away. Fine with Varric. That’s about as much of Cassandra’s compassion as he can take.

One of the soldiers is retrieving a message from a squawking raven as Varric returns to Hawke’s room. There’s no reason that it would have anything at all to do with him - it’s only been a week since he’s written Fenris - the letter would have only just now reached his people, who are probably still tracking the guy - but he watches the soldier for a moment, regardless. Maybe he’ll talk to Lavellan. Maybe they’ll send a message to Skyhold, to Cole. Varric is not leaving, after all, until Hawke is all right, and maybe Cole is her best bet.

He returns to the room and settles back into the chair by Hawke’s bed with a sigh. All at once Hawke gasps sharply, sitting bolt upright, eyes darting around the room. She reaches back in a fluid motion he’s seen her do a thousand, a million times before, but there is no staff there for her to grab.

“Hawke,” he says, surprisingly evenly, considering she scared the shit out of him.

She stares at him for a long time, and then exhales thinly, one hand probing her sore ribs. “This must be real,” she says hoarsely. “Nothing hurts this badly in the Fade.”

“Of course it’s real, you idiot,” Varric mumbles, once he finally trusts himself to speak. “I’ve been telling you that all week.” He’s tense, waiting for her to forget, to start screaming again, but she looks…lucid. Remarkably tired, but lucid. The sunburst brand on her forehead has faded further, just as the healer said it would, but visible enough, and the contrast with her wide eyes is disturbing. Varric tries not to stare.

“I thought you were with me.”

“In the Fade? No, I’ve been here the whole time.” Just how badly did this botched Rite of Tranquility scramble her brains, anyway? She doesn’t seem to be amnesiac, but Varric doesn’t want to ask her what she remembers and risk… _startling_ her back into unconsciousness.

“I remember…hearing you talk to me. But I thought you were walking with me, telling me all these things about the Inquisition.” She frowns. “But then you sounded so miserable, and all of a sudden I realized I’d been walking by myself for a long time. So I woke up.”

“You’ve been trapped in the Fade, Hawke. Like what happened to Feynriel.”

She nods, her brows knit in confusion. “How long?” It’s barely more than a whisper.

“Almost two weeks. Since the Inquisition found you, anyway. Before that, I…don’t know.” That’s not entirely true. As far as he could piece together talking with the other victims of the slavers ( _the ones Hawke saved_ ), they’d had her for maybe a week before deciding to turn her Tranquil. The way the others told it, the only reason they stayed in one place long enough for the Inquisition to find them was neither of the slavers could decide what to do with their half-dead prize captive. But he shouldn’t have mentioned ‘before’. Hawke’s eyes grow wide and frightened again and her gaze darts to the door. She is waiting for slavers to burst in.

“Varric, you have to go, they can’t find you here,” she hisses.

Varric feels sick. He eases off the chair and onto the edge of the bed next to her. “No, Hawke, no. They’re gone and you’re safe. Look around you.”

She does, and then she starts shaking her head very slowly. “Oh,” she says softly, and she presses both hands against her forehead.

“It really doesn’t look that bad, you know,” he says, again, oddly calm, all things considered. “It’s fading. It looked a lot worse when I got here.”

Hawke doesn’t really seem to hear him, fingers still worrying the healing brand on her forehead, so Varric reaches over and takes both of her hands in his. And then Hawke looks at him, really looks at him, and something of the angst of the past two weeks must show on his face, because Hawke’s own expression crumples and a sob tears free from her throat. “I’m sorry, Varric.”

He doesn’t exactly know what she’s apologizing for, and Varric doesn’t bother asking for clarification. In fact, he doesn’t say much of anything for a while, just holds her when she presses her face into his shoulder.

 

* * *

 

The daily routine doesn’t change too much after that - he still spends a lot of time at Hawke’s side in a tiny inn in the ass-end of Orlais - but at least now she can talk back. When she isn’t busy eating everything in sight. Funny thing about being stuck in the Fade - apparently you forget you need to eat, until you aren’t there anymore. But she’s still weak, and in a lot of pain, and the return to Skyhold will have to be postponed. She seems to have accepted, with little fuss, that she will be accompanying him back to the Inquisition’s stronghold.

“I told Fenris that you’d been hurt and to meet us there, anyway,” he shrugs. Hawke’s eyes narrow, and he holds up his hands in a gesture of placation. “I was purposely vague on the details, all right?” He asks her what happened, and Hawke pretends not to know what he’s talking about. She sighs, loudly and long-suffering, when he doesn’t let up.

“Do we really have nothing better to talk about than my love life?”

“Not really. I already burned through my best ‘adventures with the Inquisition’ stories. Not my fault you were unconscious the whole time.”

Hawke sighs again, apparently resigned to sharing with the class. “You know, at first I thought the worst was behind us once we were out of Kirkwall. That turned out to be the easy part.”

Very easy, yes. Easier than Varric had thought it would be. It was after that day in the Gallows, Hawke standing between Meredith and Orsino and looking rather like she wanted to send both of them to bed with no supper that he started to think seriously about how she would get out of Kirkwall in a hurry. Hawke herself had offered no input besides an uncomfortable shrug and a “I don’t know, bloody walk?” He tried Isabela for suggestions of the watery variety; she was as reticent as Hawke, but it was harder for her to avoid Varric, given that they lived under the same roof. In retrospect, none of them had been very good at facing those kinds of harsh realities, they’d avoided the need for contingency plans. Which probably seemed obvious to any bystander.

The city had been chaos that night, the overland routes choked off. The ship had seemed an incredible gamble, too, but it had been their only option. Especially once the rumor had started going around that they’d be raising the Twins, apparently at any moment, stranding every ship in the harbor. But Aveline had the guards well in hand, out on the streets quelling unrest, and by the time the anti-mage camp rounded up enough templars to raise the gates, anybody who was leaving had already left.

“So, what, the apostate fugitive life wasn’t as glamorous as you remember?”

“Well, yes, frankly it was a lot easier when it was my parents doing most of the worrying, deciding where to go. I figured…Sebastian would be out for blood, or the Divine would get her Exalted March, and the best idea I could come up with was to let myself be spotted, once in a while, heading as far away from Kirkwall as possible. Fenris would’ve rather we bunker down in a cave somewhere, but then I don’t think he gives a rat’s ass about Kirkwall.”

Varric gives an exaggerated sigh. “You and me are the only ones who do, Hawke. And Aveline, probably. She’s got the worst job in Thedas.”

“It worked for a while. We made good time. Nobody really bothered us, other than the occasional brainless highwayman. Then the fighting started in earnest. I suggested that we travel separately - the two of us being fairly recognizable apart, but especially strolling down the road together - but Fenris would have none of it. And then we bumped into a group of red templars.” She pauses, and for a moment Varric thinks something of him must be rubbing off on her, to make such deft use of a storyteller’s most venerable tool, the dramatic pause - but then he looks over at her. She hasn’t gone silent for dramatic effect. She struggles a moment more to voice whatever had happened next before she can continue. “Varric,” she says, her tone too brittle, “bit of friendly advice - if you’re basically a giant walking lyrium potion, you don’t want to get stabbed by one of those red fellows.”

“Oh,” he says, and then falls silent.

It’s not as though it doesn’t make sense, for Fenris to be particularly susceptible to the effects of red lyrium. He’s not sure why it never occurred to him before. Seems like it hadn’t occurred to Hawke, either. But then, why would it? The tiny sliver in Bartrand’s mansion - well, he wouldn’t have been around it long enough for it to take effect, none of them were. Varric thinks back to that final night in the Gallows, remembers Fenris weaving in and out of them, cursing, trying to draw the freaky living statues away from where Hawke and Meredith were toe-to-toe. He’d been well out of the vicinity of her blade.

“This is a _momentous_ occasion. I’ve actually rendered you speechless,” Hawke says finally, her teasing not so forced this time.

“Wait. Shit. He’s not - ”

“No, no, there were no emergency trips to the Grey Wardens this time,” she says quietly. “But that’s what I thought at first, too. He…I don’t know. Maybe it’s nothing. But Fenris told me once that his markings will…degrade, eventually. He said that Danarius was supposed to do some kind of, I don’t know, ritual maintenance or something. I don’t know the details. Fenris didn’t volunteer and I didn’t ask. Besides, we both thought Danarius was probably making the whole thing up.”

“But now you’re not sure.”

“Now I’m not sure,” Hawke confirms. “Not if his reaction to red lyrium was any indication.” She sighs. “Anyway. Long story short. I got your letter while I was waiting for Fenris to not-die. I didn’t tell him about it. I sat on it for a long time, Varric, trying to decide what to do. I managed to convince him, finally, that we ought to split up and meet in the next town. Since by that point, most everyone in the area had heard the story of the Champion of Kirkwall and the elf fighting a group of rogue templars on the road.”

“But you didn’t go to the next town.” He’s been wondering that, actually, how Hawke would’ve managed to shake Fenris.

“No, I didn’t. I was still waffling about whether to stick to the plan or meet you in Skyhold right up until I set out. But I just kept thinking about your letter, and how these red templars were just going to keep spreading, and what if it happened again…”

It occurs to him, suddenly, that Fenris must have taken some blow meant for Hawke. She’d all but said as much to the Inquisitor, after all, hadn’t she? Varric has supposed it was something like this, knowing how much Hawke liked to take up the world’s problems and wear them like a suit of heavy, inconvenient armor. Of course the red templars are all her fault, of course it’s her fault that Fenris might die someday because of magic done to him before he’d ever even heard of Kirkwall. Of course she doesn’t accept this, can’t accept this; and of course running off to the Inquisition is her only course of action, because the Inquisition is synonymous with “doing something.” Shit, she was prepared to run all the way to _Weisshaupt_ to get away from this whole “Fenris-possibly-dying” thing. Because Hawke exists in a perpetual state of movement. And running away from a problem is preferable to standing still.

“I know that look,” Hawke interrupts, “It’s the Hawke-I-love-you-but-you’re-an-idiot look.”

He grins, in spite of it all. “Last time I checked, everyone dies sooner or later, Hawke.” He holds up one hand in a placating gesture. “But that’s all I’ll say. You know how much I hate saying ‘I told you so.’”

Hawke snorts. “Because you’re a paragon of modesty, Varric.”

It’s a relief, to hear her sounding like herself, even though he never seriously doubted that she would recover. There is more that she’s not telling him, Varric is sure - about the Fade or Fenris or her captors, but Varric knows Hawke and he knows he can’t persuade her into sharing anything she doesn’t want to. He doesn’t have to know the whole story, anyway, just that she’ll be all right.

“You know,” she begins thoughtfully, “it felt like I was in there a long time. In the Fade. Time makes no sense there, it’s impossible to keep track of. When I woke up…for a moment there, I was afraid I’d been gone for years. Two weeks…I suppose it could have been worse.”

“Could’ve been worse? Yeah, I guess so. But it was plenty long, Hawke.”


	2. Chapter Two

That last kick to the chest must have broken a rib or two, if the agony that is merely _breathing_ is anything to go by. Her wrists are bound behind her back, which makes the pain even worse, and Hawke can do nothing except sit motionless against the cold stone of the cell. She doesn’t know how long they’ve left her here. Days, weeks, or months? Each seems as plausible as the next. When exactly did they capture her? She tries to think back - it was stupid, really - Hawke had sought shelter in a cave that the slavers had already commandeered for their own dark purposes. She had been caught unawares and she’d only managed to incinerate two or three of the bastards before they had taken her out. This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t been alone, whispers a voice in the dark corners of her mind, a voice that sounds disturbingly like the Nightmare. That she can even feel the shiver of fear running up and down her spine is a relief, because hadn’t they made her Tranquil? Hawke could still hear her own endless shrieking echoing in the space between her ears, could feel the flames scorching her until there was nothing left - When had she gotten better?

Someone’s rattling, ragged breathing echoes off the damp walls of her cell, and Hawke edges toward the sound. It is her father, dying in his bed in Lothering, murmuring that she must look after them. No, she blinks, and then it is Fenris, and Hawke reaches out with a shaking hand (when did she wriggle free of her bonds?) and traces the marks on his throat, burning bright red with corruption. She is sobbing his name, and when he opens his eyes they are dim and clouded. He moves to speak, and spikes of red lyrium erupt from his mouth.

Hawke lurches awake, and her chest is on fire with the sudden motion. She eases herself back against her bedroll, lying very still until the tightness in her chest lessens to at least bearable levels. It isn’t as though Hawke isn’t used to roughing it, but her sore ribs would probably be better served by a fluffy feather bed than the cold hard ground. The rest of the Inquisition camp is silent, and she hopes that means she hasn’t been screaming aloud. These are the dreams she has to live with, it seems - a shit stew of Fenris’s illness and the menace of the Nightmare and physical Fade and the sheer terror of capture and Tranquility. It is absurd and deeply unfair that even after clawing her way out of the Fade - _twice_ \- she is plagued by such vicious dreams. As a result, she is still exhausted, even after doing little but sleeping and eating for almost a week.

Varric insisted that she was not to worry, that he would “take care of everything.” Exactly what ‘everything’ refers to, Hawke isn’t sure, but Maker only knows she could use a break from making the decisions for once. Whether Hawke returning to Skyhold was Varric’s decision or the Inquisitor’s or both, she doesn’t know. The Inquisitor and Solas are long gone, actually, Lavellan having been away from Skyhold plenty long. But Cassandra has stayed behind, journeying back to Skyhold with Hawke and Varric and a few other Inquisition soldiers. The slowpokes. Hawke eases herself to her feet, her need to step away from the camp and clear her head stronger than the protests of her sore body. Cassandra is sitting in front of the fire, taking the late guard shift, and she turns as Hawke approaches. “Are you all right?” she asks.

Well, clearly not, Hawke would be asleep if she were all right. “Oh, you know. Nothing like a good constitutional in the middle of the night.”

Cassandra regards her a long while. “Of course,” she says, finally, brushing over Hawke’s sarcasm. “It’s not far too Skyhold now,” she adds, as Hawke steps away from the camp.

Hawke supposes that’s meant to be comforting. And maybe it would be, if Skyhold was more than another mere stop on a journey with no real end in sight. The Wardens at Weisshaupt must be contacted. This she still believes, though now she doubts the odds of success. The Warden stronghold, notoriously impenetrable - she thought that her message might be regarded more seriously if she delivered it in person, but then again, there’s no guarantee that they would even let her in.

No, Weisshaupt was never anything more than an excuse to keep running, murmurs the little voice of doubt - or is it reason? - in the back of her mind.

And now, she’s resigned to waiting at Skyhold until Fenris shows up. Assuming Fenris is going to show up. Varric wrote to him while she slept, and as much as she pissed and moaned about his interference in her life, Hawke is secretly glad that someone made the decision for her. Varric has got the gist of what happened with the red templars, though she hasn’t told him the details and Hawke is sure he knows there’s more to it. She hasn’t told him about Fenris’s blood on her hands, her useless hands that have never been adept at healing, hands that can do nothing but thrust the last of their elfroot potions at him. She hasn’t told him that Fenris whispered her name once, twice, and then fell silent for a long time.

Damn him, he’d hidden the extent of the injury. They had dragged the bodies of the dead templars into the brush off the road and pressed forward, and everything was fine until it _wasn’t_ , until she turned and saw Fenris’s pale face and the sick red glow of the marks that snaked up his arm. Damn him, but it was like Carver in the Deep Roads all over again.

She hasn’t told Varric that she spent that sunny afternoon sitting in a forest glade waiting for Fenris to die or live. She wept the entire time, gulping sobs that made it difficult to breathe; not only for Fenris but for Bethany and Carver, for her father and her mother, for Anders and Sebastian and the dead bodies in the street, nameless but no less accusing with their glassy-eyed stares. She had balanced on the edge of despair and slowly inched her way back as the sun set and Fenris’s breathing grew a little less labored.

He recovered nicely, insisting that he suffered no lasting ill effects from the red lyrium. She wanted to believe him, and mostly she did, but there was a lingering suspicion in Hawke’s mind that he would keep the truth from her if he deemed it the best course of action. They were getting ready to move on and Varric’s letter was still heavy against her chest, tucked in her armor, when she finally asked, point-blank, if Fenris would rather live without the lyrium markings. He regarded her with a raised eyebrow for a long while. “All these years, you’ve always said my appearance didn’t bother you,” he said mildly. “You _wound_ me, Hawke.”

“Oh, stop it. You know what I mean.”

“What answer do you expect me to give? Such a thing can’t be done.”

“But if it _could_ \- there’s got to be a mage out there somewhere who can - ”

“I will not turn my body over to a mage - ” In spite of herself, Hawke grinned, and Fenris’s mouth twitched, just a little. He pressed forward before she could interject. “Damn it, Hawke, I am trying to be serious. No mage besides you, then.”

“But if it could save your life…”

“So I should put my life in the hands of this hypothetical stranger? No, Hawke, I will not. This is what you always do. You’d rather butt your head against a problem forever. You cannot accept things for what they are. It is what you did in Kirkwall, and with Anders - ” He stopped abruptly, apparently having not intended to go that far, but the fact that he thought it squeezed her heart.

Hawke had just laughed, for lack of anything better to do. “Well! You go right for the jugular, don’t you?”

“Hawke.”

“Butt my head…” She exhaled loudly and returned to packing. “No, I don’t intend to roll over and accept you dying because of those marks, sorry to disappoint.”

He was right, though. Quiet acceptance has never been Hawke’s greatest strength. To struggle, to resist - that is what she knows, that is how she lived her life ever since the day fire first leapt from her palm and scorched Mother’s favorite rug. No, Hawke was not ready to slow down. Helping the Inquisition seemed just another way to not do that, until the slavers showed up and trapped her in the worst possible place she could think of - her own mind.

She returns to the camp and her decidedly uninviting bedroll after a few moments; her head is not entirely clear, but Hawke is tired and she knows there is still a great deal of travel ahead of her, despite what Cassandra says. Hawke still isn’t sure what to make of the woman who had apparently pegged her as leader of the Inquisition before Lavellan quite literally fell into it. Hawke knows that she cannot possibly be what the Seeker expected. No doubt Cassandra expected _Hawke_ , the Champion of Kirkwall, scourge of cities, whose name is simultaneously celebrated and cursed throughout Thedas, who eats Qunari for breakfast. Not Marian Hawke the woman, tired and rootless. She knows she must be a disappointment to all of them, not just Cassandra; captured by the very villains they fight every day and screaming herself awake like a woman possessed. Maker only knows she is disappointed enough in herself. No, the best thing Hawke can do now is not slow them down any further. She must let them all get back to their great work.

It is ridiculous, Hawke reflects as she curls up to attempt sleep once more, that anyone would ever suggest she lead the Inquisition. Wasn’t Cassandra paying attention? Hasn’t she figured out by now that Hawke ruins everything she touches?

 

* * *

 

The Frostbacks have shed their morning garb of pink and gold when the going gets too steep for the horses, the air gets thinner (making breathing even more uncomfortable, but Hawke grins and bears it), and Skyhold suddenly comes into view, nestled between the peaks as though it is an extension of the mountain itself. Apparently, it is so old it may as well be. Solas sure as hell knew what he was doing when he told the Inquisitor about this place. The last time she was here it was chaos - floods of pilgrims and soldiers, people unloading supplies, a cacophony of barked orders. Now Skyhold is a little more settled with its new occupants. But the thing that hasn’t changed was the sense of hope here, a feeling that one could help defeat Corypheus simply by striding purposefully among Skyhold’s stony walls.

Cassandra drops the reins of her horse into the waiting hands of a stablehand, but before she can say a word a young man in an Inquisition uniform hurries over to her. “Lady Cassandra,” he says, breathlessly, “it’s good you’re here, I was just coming down to find someone - the Inquisitor’s in the war room with some mad elf what showed up this morning, said he got a letter telling him to come here - ”

She’s cold and her chest aches and her feet are screaming for a rest, but Hawke brushes past the two of them, and after a moment she breaks into a run. Varric shouts her name from somewhere behind her, but she pays him no mind. Nor does she let it bother her that a great hall full of mages and dignitaries and Orlesian nobles are staring at her as she makes for the war room at a run. Hawke thrusts open the heavy door, and there is Fenris, standing in front of the Inquisitor, body tense and expression stormy. Lavellan seems unperturbed by his lack of patience. “I’m not lying to you,” she is saying as Hawke bursts in, “they are on their way - oh.” Hawke barely pays her any mind; there might as well be no one else in the entire world except the two of them. Fenris is staring at her in much the same way. Hawke takes a few steps toward him but Fenris doesn’t move an inch.

But it has been days of hard travel, at a pace faster than what she was truly ready for. Her legs abruptly decide they are no longer up to the task of keeping her upright, and Hawke flails and crashes to her knees. Fenris jerks as if struck. But it’s the Inquisitor that hurries over, kneeling next to her and putting a hand on her shoulder.

“I’m fine,” Hawke mutters. “Just…decided I felt like sitting down _right then_.”

“You ought to rest - ”

“I said I’m fine,” Hawke snaps.

Lavellan straightens. “I’ll just - well, I have a room for you, Hawke. You remember where the guest quarters are.” Maker bless that woman and her sense of tact. She makes for the door. “Take your time,” she adds, glancing back at Fenris, still as a statue.

Varric had asked her if she wanted to write to Fenris herself, but she had been more confident in Varric’s way with words than her own. Besides, as she had lamented to him, “What am I supposed to say? Dear Fenris. Sorry I couldn’t deal with your inevitable mortality, and left you to deal with mine instead. In retrospect, kind of an asshole move. Love, Marian.” Hawke is not good with words. Anyone who knows anything about Kirkwall ought to know that. Instead of speaking she stares at the floor, the stone hard and cold through her breeches.

“Lovely stonework they have here,” she murmurs, finally looking up at him, though she doesn’t attempt to stand just yet. “You ought to come over here and see it.” She’s broken the spell, spoken first and made herself real. Fenris exhales loudly and crosses the room, kneeling in front of her.

There is accusation written in every line on his face, but Hawke forces herself not to look away. Then his eyes land on the faded sunburst on her forehead, by now almost entirely healed and visible only at such close quarters. His face changes into an expression that Hawke wishes she hadn’t seen. “It’s fine,” she blurts out. “I’m fine. Well, not really, but mostly, I-I’m so sorry, they tried making me Tranquil, these slavers, but it didn’t work, the - the Inquisitor’s bald fellow says it’s because of the Fade. Varric wrote you about the Fade, but Varric says it looked much worse, only I’m so sorry, Fenris… _Fenris_ …” A moment ago she could think of nothing to say and now her words chase themselves in circles, desperate to get out. Whatever hard words Fenris had for her, they are gone now; instead he brushes her forehead with the tips of his fingers and then draws her into his arms.

“You didn’t come,” he says into her hair. “I waited, and you didn’t come.”

“I’m sorry,” she says again, for lack of anything better to say, and then she says it again, and once more for good measure, repeating it like a prayer. And she is sorry - not sorry that she came here to try and help, but sorry that she left Fenris to do it, sorry that she is so terrified to lose him, sorry that she has wasted time living without him these past few months. She doesn’t know how long they stay there on the floor, an awkward tangle of limbs, but her feet are starting to fall asleep. “The Inquisition would probably like their war room back,” she whispers.

“Hang the Inquisition.”

“No, let’s not. They’re very nice people.”

“Can you stand?”

Hawke considers this. “If I really, _really_ had to,” she admits.

“You don’t have to.” Fenris stands and scoops her into his arms, one arm beneath her knees and the other cradling her torso against his chest. It is done very gracefully, or so it seems to Hawke, who could not muster grace at the moment if her life depended on it. She murmurs directions to the tower where Skyhold keeps its guest, and then Hawke falls silent. It is…nice, here, in Fenris’s arms, and quite frankly he could carry her all the way to Tevinter or something and she wouldn’t mind terribly. There is a maid lurking around the tower; Hawke has no idea what kind of guests end up at Skyhold usually, but the girl seems unperturbed by this lanky elf carting around a guest of the Inquisitor’s, and she gives them cheerful directions to the prepared rooms.

Fenris deposits her on the bed; gently, the way Bethany handled the newly hatched chicks as a girl, the way her mother’s light fingers gathered cuttings from the garden in Hightown. “I’m fine,” Hawke tells Fenris. “Really. I just need a rest.” The fireplace is lit but the fire neglected and Fenris steps away to coax it back to life.

“You were injured,” he says roughly. It’s not a question.

“There were slavers. They had _children_. I had to.”

“You had to,” he repeats, very softly, gripping the mantle, and Hawke realizes that she’s in trouble. “Like you had to go to Weisshaupt. Alone.”

“Well, _yes_ , the Inquisition decided they wanted every Orlesian Warden that wasn’t dead or crazy for themselves and their commander had just been eaten by a blighted dragon - Fenris, you weren’t there, you don’t understand - ”

It was the wrong thing to say. “No, I don’t!” he snarls, turning away from the fire and stepping towards her abruptly. “You left - you _left_ \- ”

“I had to try and make things right,” she says, and her voice sounds hollow in her ears. “But the red templars - it was too dangerous. I couldn’t ask you to come.”

“So you made the decision for me.”

“No, that wasn’t - ”

“That is exactly what it was. You knew what my answer would be and so you did not give me a choice at all.”

“Red lyrium and holes in the sky and ancient darkspawn are not what you agreed to, Fenris,” she says, even as she knows it is a terrible defense. She has not seen him like this in a long, long time. She has never once been afraid of Fenris, and she never will, but knowing that she is the one who has pushed him to this state for once is worse than fear.

“It damn well wasn’t. I agreed to stay with you, Hawke. And you took that from me. You _took_ \- ” He scrubs a hand over his face. He can barely look at her. “Do you still intend to go to Weisshaupt?”

“Yes,” she whispers.

“Then rest. We’ll need supplies.” The ‘we’ is deliberate, Hawke knows, and he gives her no chance to argue, turning and leaving the room abruptly. She braces herself for the slam of the door but it closes surprisingly gently behind him, and for some reason, it makes tears spring to her eyes. Trapped in the Fade, there were spirits - despair demons that followed her, winking in and out of view, and attempted to rattle her with a litany of her regrets. This succeeded in shaking her, at first, but it got to be so pervasive and frankly annoying that Hawke took to preempting them and screaming every thing she’d ever regretted in her entire life in the direction of the black city. 

 _Let Bethany die. Let Mother die. Let Papa down. Snuck a bite of Papa’s birthday cake when no one was looking and blamed the twins. Almost let Carver die. Didn’t save Thrask. Didn’t kill Thrask myself. Turned the mages in. Didn’t turn those other mages in. Woke up Corypheus. Discovered red lyrium. Didn’t kill Anders. Didn’t save Anders._ And now she has a new sin to add to her list. _Broke Fenris’s heart._

Hawke lies back for a while, aching bones singing in relief. But in spite of the command to rest, actual sleep seems impossible. Hawke is tired, but tired of sleeping. She doesn’t want to see anyone, but she can't stay in that little room, either. Without her staff or her armor, Hawke is only an anonymous face among the rest of the hustle and bustle of Skyhold. She feels naked at first, but no one else seems to wander around in full plate carting around their weapons, and Hawke supposes she ought to do her best to fit in. But the more she noses around, the more pleasure she finds in the anonymity of it all. She hasn’t been anonymous since…well, not since she was Marian, a nice girl living on a farm outside of Lothering, wrassling pigs and helping her mother darn socks.

She doesn’t know where Fenris is, but then, Skyhold is a big place, and she knows that he wouldn’t leave without a word. _Unlike me._ Eventually, Hawke decides she’s frittered away enough of the day and makes up her mind. Fenris is angry at her anyway. She makes her way up to the second floor of Skyhold’s library. It is surprisingly well-equipped, given that they found the place lost to the sands of time. Dorian looks up from his book as she approaches. “Champion,” he says by way of greeting. “The Inquisitor mentioned you might be around.”

Yes, “around”, as if a leisurely visit were her idea. She is, after all, only a visitor here. The Inquisitor belongs here. Dorian belongs here, regarding her from the armchair as if he’s lived there his entire life. He’s staked out a good spot, Hawke realizes - that window has a good view of the courtyard, and this area of the library is secluded but not isolated. “Yes, well. Varric was insistent.”

Dorian closes the book on his lap and leans forward, conspiratorial. “He is a bit of a mother hen, isn’t he?”

Hawke grins. “You have no idea.” But that isn’t true, is it? Dorian knows. Of course he knows what Varric is like. They’re both a part of the Inquisition, an integral part of it, something far bigger than Hawke, something meant to heal instead of destroy. It isn’t that she’s jealous, really, but it is hard to accept that the world has left her behind. Well. Maybe that is jealousy, actually. Her smile fades.

“In fact,” Dorian continues, smoothing over the awkwardness with a grace that could only come from living in a place with skeletons in the closet, “Varric stopped by earlier to cluck at me about staying away from your paramour.”

“Oh,” Hawke sighs. “Probably not a terrible idea. Fenris isn’t unreasonable, but then again he is already _awfully_ put out with me right now.”

“Yes, well, I would’ve packed my bags a long time ago if I fell to pieces every time someone pointed at me and shrieked, _A magister_!”

Hawke smiles again. She likes Dorian; she likes all of the Inquisitor’s inner circle, actually, despite being a little creeped out by Cole and the weirdness with Cassandra notwithstanding. “Actually. Magisters. That’s why I’m up here bothering you.”

“And here I thought it was because of the dashing pair we made. The Tevinter outcast and the Champion of Kirkwall.”

“Did you ever hear anything, Dorian, about a magister looking for a way to brand a man with lyrium?”

“Lyrium…branding.” He strokes that magnificent mustache. Stroud would be jealous, but then she remembers with a jolt that Stroud is dead. “I can see where that would appeal to them. Yes, there was a rumor, I suppose, quite some years back. There was to be a tournament, I think, to determine the lucky candidate. That was the last I heard of it, though.” He regards her curiously. “Why, was it a success?”

“Ye-es. I’d say so.”

A beat passes. Dorian leans back in his chair and hums in understanding.

“And - did you further hear, Dorian, that said marks would kill a man, eventually, if they weren’t maintained? And what kind of…blood magic hell ritual - no offense - one would have to undertake to maintain said marks?”

“None taken,” he says thoughtfully. “No, Hawke, that I can’t answer. But I’ll look into it for you.”

Hawke chews her lip. “Quietly.”

“Quietly,” he agrees. “We’ve got plenty of worriers around here, after all.”

 

* * *

 

When she leaves the library and steps out onto the battlements, the Frostbacks are awash in the colors of late afternoon, and Hawke can hear singing. Down in the courtyard, a sister is leading a rather sizable congregation in singing the Chant. The words are familiar, but Hawke can’t place the specific verse - her parents were rather neglectful of her religious education. Andrastians - and Hawke supposes she is one, just for lack of any better alternative - are supposed to take comfort in hearing the Chant sung, but it only reminds Hawke of her mother’s funeral. Sebastian had been very sweet about the whole thing, taking care of most of those mundane aspects of death and dying that Hawke found totally incomprehensible. She misses Sebastian - _that_ Sebastian - and if that man is gone forever it’s her own bloody fault.

Hawke leans forward and rests her forearms on the battlements, watching the chanters below, but she knows even more acutely that she doesn’t belong here. For one thing, unlike these people, Hawke cannot claim that she is trying to do the right thing. The right thing would have been to stay behind, to let Stroud reorganize and go to stupidly remote Weisshaupt if he wanted to. She should have stayed. The look on Lavellan’s face was terrible when she realized they were asking her to choose who should live and who should die. Surely, Hawke thought, Lavellan would see the logic in Hawke staying behind. But then Varric was calling her name, and Hawke made the enormous mistake of looking at him. Her resolve crumbled into a thousand pieces. She wishes she was strong enough to have stayed behind. If Varric hadn’t been there, Hawke knows she would have been. And then the next moment she’s _so glad_ he was there, because otherwise she would have actually gone through with it.

“It’s something, isn’t it?” Varric says abruptly from beside her. “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.”

Hawke looks back down at the chanters. “Something,” she agrees.

“So. I hear you’ve had a fun day.”

“I wouldn’t go straight to ‘fun’.”

Varric leans against the battlement, his back to the courtyard below. “I bumped into Fenris earlier. He wasn’t particularly chatty. But apparently he’s going with you to Weisshaupt now?”

“I don’t think he’s leaving it up for debate.”

“Well. I mean. You didn’t give him much choice, Hawke. Just saying.”

“There’s always a choice.”

Varric is quiet for a moment. “You could just, you know, write them a letter. Leliana would see it delivered. She gets shit done.”

“I’m just trying to make things right.”

“And, what, you’ve got to suffer for it? Maker’s balls, Hawke. Nobody likes a martyr. Martyrs don’t sell. Andraste has that market pretty well cornered.”    

She smiles a bit, despite herself. “So, you think I ought to send the Wardens a nice letter, then - what - take Fenris and go wait for this all to blow over?”

“Why the hell not? You’re allowed to sit this one out. You don’t have to be there right at the forefront every time someone in Thedas stubs a toe.” He sighs. “Look, Hawke. You and the elf. You only get so many chances at this sort of thing. Sometimes you get to a point where you can’t go back. Trust me on this one. I know the kind of shit you carry around. Fenris doesn’t have to be another one.”

Hawke doesn’t answer, but she knows Varric doesn’t expect her to. Below them the chant has concluded, and the singers disperse, talking and laughing with each other, comforted by something so simple.

“Well. I don’t know about you, but I could use a drink,” Varric says, and Hawke lets him lead her away for lack of anything better to do.

 

* * *

 

That night she is trapped again in that windowless room, waiting for the slavers to decide what to do with her - ransom her? kill her? - when the door opens, and neither of her captors step in to rough her up (kind of pointless, really, as there is no information for them to shake out of her), nor do they toss in the daily crust of bread and a cup of water. No, instead the door opens and they shove Stroud inside. Hawke recoils in horror; he stares at her with red, sunken eyes. Could the Fade speed up the Blight’s corruption like this? “It’s all right,” she gasps, holding out a hand in a gesture of conciliation, “we’ll find a healer. It’ll be all right.”

“You left me to die,” he hisses, and launches himself at her without warning. His bloodied hands tug at her hair, press on her neck, and Hawke screams and tries to kick him away. Stroud grips her tight, pinioning her arms to her side, and somewhere in the distance, someone is calling her name -

Slowly and somehow all at once she knows she has been dreaming. Fenris releases his grip on her arms; his eyes are wide in the dim firelight. But his eyes are clear, and the green she knows, and Hawke reaches to cup his cheek with one trembling hand. He was not there when she finally returned to her quarters and decided to attempt sleep, and she drifted off thinking she might wake to find the bed empty. She hates him for always coming back. She hates herself for always doubting that he will. “I’m sorry,” she gasps, and then, “I’m fine.” It is unconvincing; Fenris tangles his fingers in her hair and murmurs her name and Hawke doesn’t know what to do except sit there in the dark and cry.

He folds her into his arms. “It was only a dream,” he rumbles into her ear. “Nothing that can hurt you.”

“But it isn’t - it’s you - ” She cannot even find the words. Yes, she dreams of the slavers that held her against her will, who tried to take what she is away from her, but that is not what she is afraid of. She dreams of losing him, of losing anyone else, and when she thinks of more death, Hawke is sure she is teetering on the edge of an abyss from which there is no way back. She ran because she could not bear to drag Fenris down this hole with her, but this time she lacks the willpower to claw her way back from the edge. This time she holds onto Fenris and tumbles over the edge.

“I’m here,” he says, and holds her tighter.

“Leaving was stupid,” she sobs. “I can’t do this on my own.”

“No one said you had to,” he answers, and somewhere beneath his concern there is a kind of fond annoyance, and it is something warm and familiar to cling to. “I thought you left because you were angry with me,” Fenris admits, finally.

“No, never. That wasn’t why I left.”

“I know that now.”

It is not, she realizes, that Fenris is willing to roll over and die; rather, he has lived with the marks long enough to accept what they are, and he is unwilling to waste whatever time they do have - and it may not be long, or it may be a hundred years - on a struggle for answers that may leave them no better than they started. Hawke gulps back the rest of her tears. “I have to tell you something,” she mumbles into his chest. “The Inquisitor has a friend - a Tevinter mage.” She tells him about the Inquisitor’s Tevinter friend, and what she has asked him to do. Fenris stiffens in her arms, but doesn’t push her away, which Hawke takes as a good sign.

“I wish you hadn’t, Hawke,” he sighs.

“I know. More of my terrible life choices. I promise, I won’t act on anything he finds for me unless you want to, Fenris. I’m sorry I went behind your back but I’m not sorry I did it. I just…I have to know you’ll be all right.” Hawke takes a shaky breath. “These nightmares. I can’t…I simply can’t live like this.”

“I know,” Fenris answers, and if anyone does know, it’s him.

“Aren’t we adorable,” she mumbles, “with our matching night terrors.”

Fenris chuckles, breath a warm whoosh against her ear.

Finally she lifts her head from his chest, scrubbing at her damp cheeks. Fenris is watching her carefully, and there is understanding present in his face that wasn’t there this morning. Before Hawke can talk herself out of it, she kisses him, tentative at first. He doesn’t push away but returns the gesture; not a quick peck or something deep and desperate but somewhere in the middle, the kiss of two people who have all the time in the world with which to kiss each other. Hawke breaks away and rests her hot forehead against Fenris’s.

“I missed you,” she sighs.

“What happened, Hawke. In the Fade? And with the slavers.”

She pulls away, nodding in acknowledgment of the fact that he ought to know. “All right,” she says, and sits back on her heels. So she tells him, about Varric and the Inquisition, about Stroud and the Wardens, about the spirit of the Divine and the Nightmare. She tells him that she almost stayed behind and he doesn’t flinch, but Hawke notices the tightening in his jaw. She tells Fenris about the slavers, about the little Orlesian girl who had lost her parents in the fighting and Hawke would pull faces at to see her smile. She tells him about being lost in the Fade again until she heard Varric speaking to her. And as the sky outside begins to lighten, Hawke makes Fenris talk too. Clearly, he thinks little of his own heroics, but Hawke is glad that he kept busy while she was away. Being foolish.

That something could have happened to him while she was away - she had buried that fear deep in her heart with all of the others. “You scared me,” she admits. “That day with the red templars.” One moment her opponent had been nearly atop her and then replaced with Fenris the next, and it was only when she heard him hiss with pain that she realized what had happened. “I’m not worth that kind of sacrifice.”

He frowns at this - not angry, but confused. “How can you say that? You would have done the same for me.”

Hawke lies back and considers this for a moment. Hawke’s frown mirrors Fenris’s. “I hate when you’re right,” she sighs.

The corner of his mouth quirks in a half-smile, something she has seen him do a thousand times, but the sight thrills her heart regardless. “I could live without you, Hawke, if I had to. But I don’t want to.”

She reaches up and cups his cheek. “I’m rather fond of you, too, Fenris,” she whispers.

“Then don’t leave me behind.”

“No. No, I won’t do that again.”

“I made my decision a long time ago. I will see this through with you.” He pauses. “Then what, Hawke? After Weisshaupt.”

Was this what it had felt like for her parents when they were young, strangers in a strange country? The entire world before them with all of its exhilarating and terrifying possibility, but somehow none of that mattered as long as they had each other. “Varric’s pushing for me to retire. What do you think, Fenris? We visit the Wardens, and then retire somewhere warm and sunny?”

Fenris settles down next to her, considering the question. “Ferelden?” he offers.

“I said ‘warm’ and ‘sunny’, not ‘muddy’ and ‘smells like wet dog’.” There’s nothing that Ferelden can offer her now, nothing but bones and ash. She missed Kirkwall, but she did not think the city of chains would ever let her live there in peace again. No, if she and Fenris were to settle down, it would be a new home. For now, though, this bed is as good a home as any, and Hawke spends a few days in a bout of hedonistic laziness, dragging Fenris down with her. Hopping right back on a horse is out of the question, anyway, unless she’d like to be laid up even longer next time. No, for once she pushes thoughts of the outside world away and the ghosts relinquish their hold on her dreams. Hawke knows they will be back eventually, but it is a welcome reprieve.

She hasn’t lived like this since she was a Hightown noble, during those precious months after Fenris came back to her and before Kirkwall burned. Fenris would walk her home from cards and drink at the Hanged Man and follow her upstairs, the two of them making up for lost time. He would remove his armor piece by piece, painstakingly slow, pointedly ignoring Hawke in bed, whining at him to hurry up before she froze to death.

Except the Hanged Man has been supplanted by the Herald’s Rest, and one night, Varric tells her that the Inquisitor has asked him to go along with her on her next trip to Orlais. Something about mopping up the last of the civil war. And Hawke remembers they all have work to do. But the prospect of rest afterward is even sweeter, now that she’s allowed herself a taste. Fenris has already negotiated horses and supplies for the first leg of their journey. And that means there’s nothing left to do but say their thanks and their goodbyes.

“You look after her, Elf. Keep her out of trouble.” Varric has accompanied them to the gates.

“You ask the impossible, Varric, but I will do my best,” Fenris answers solemnly.

“Oh, ha-ha, it’s Hawke and she’s done something foolish again,” she says, too quickly, because she hates goodbyes. “And what about you?” she demands of Varric. “You’re the one staying here to fight a deranged darkspawn magister. You be careful, all right?”

“Me? I’m always careful. You’re the reckless one.”

Hawke hugs him, abruptly, if only because she has no idea when she’ll see him next, or even hear from him. “Thanks,” she says. “For looking out for me.”

“Anytime, Hawke,” he answers, giving her hand one final squeeze as she pulls away. “Now get out of here before one of us starts crying.”

 

* * *

 

The last time Hawke left Skyhold she was riding alone, the road yawning on in front of her. The way to Weisshaupt is no less lengthy, but the company has decidedly improved. The fact of the matter is that Hawke has never slept easily by herself. There were the twins beside her, kicking her shins with chubby legs in a Lothering farmhouse. Marian and Bethany, whispering secrets to each other until Father fell ill, and then not sleeping much at all. Hawke and her mother in a cot in Gamlen’s house, Hawke’s first and last conscious thoughts every morning and night that she would find a way to fix this. There was a time when she dragged the entire mattress into the parlor, because she could not stand her empty room, let alone an entire empty floor. She likes sleeping with Fenris. In all senses of the word. She likes sleeping with Fenris even when he jolts awake beside her and she doesn’t do much sleeping at all. But most of all, Hawke likes how much easier it is to ignore the Nightmare’s dire prediction about Fenris’s death when he is whole and safe beside her and within reach of her fingertips.

When Hawke sleeps, she dreams of a house that she knows is home, even though she’s never seen it in the waking world. She dreams that she has crammed her family and all of her friends in there, her parents and her siblings and Varric and those she left behind in Kirkwall, even Anders and Sebastian, and Fenris is standing next to her, one hand hovering around the small of her back. When Hawke wakes from that impossible scene, she smiles and watches the sun rise with tears in her eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand we have no idea what horrible thing is happening at Weisshaupt as of the end of DAI but at least they're together ;_; 
> 
> I didn't expect Bioware to expend the resources necessary to have Hawke's LI show up as well, but I found Hawke's one-liner about why Fenris wasn't with her to be really inadequate. So I wanted to explore that separation in a bit more depth. I may be guilty of fudging the timeline and traveling at the speed of plot, here, but I hope you can forgive me for that. 
> 
> A tremendous thank you to everyone who commented and left kudos! This is my first completed and published piece of fanfiction in something like four years, and it was fun to see how my style has evolved since then. Hopefully I will not wait another four years to post something else, lol.

**Author's Note:**

> Fenris makes his appearance in part two, which will be up in about a week, barring any unforeseen constraints on my free time. 
> 
> And a huge thank you to everyone who read this far!


End file.
